CEO Report
Thank you, Board members, for agreeing to serve our community through service on the JEA Board. I
would have enjoyed working with each of you.
I am grateful that your very first action taken as a Board was to address JEA employees. Our employees
have been through a lot over the past couple years, and rather than focus on their own wounds they
have instead focused on consistently delivering excellence to our community, including supporting me
as I helped lead through this transition.
The information you received today is a reflection of the work of 2000 people.
Behind every spreadsheet, behind every metric, behind every page of every presentation is a JEA
employee making this happen day in and day out.
The 11 of us you heard from today get the privilege of sharing our story with you, but our story is the
story of all 2000 of us. Our employees are where you will find JEA’s heart of service for our community.
They are employees like:
•
The ones who, when 15 of their co-workers in the warehouse were suddenly quarantined for 14
days, employees stepped-up to make sure that support for our field employees didn’t miss a beat;
•
The Technology employees that made this meeting possible today;
•
The Electric employees who worked through the night after the storms last week to restore
power to our neighbors;
•
The water and wastewater employees who have balanced planned capital work with
unexpected main breaks, and who are the recent recipients of multiple awards that I hope will be
presented at next month’s meeting;
•
The meter services employees who are taking advantage of the pandemic to do work that would
have interrupted commercial customers in non-pandemic times;
•
The energy audit group who have developed a way to perform virtual energy audits with some
of our most vulnerable customers;
•
The community and customer outreach employees who developed ways to continue to
volunteer in the new virtual, socially-distant world;
•
The employees that have created and are creating programs to help both our commercial and
residential customers through these challenging times;
•
The wastewater and laboratory employees taking influent samples to help advance coronavirus
research.
And these are just a few of our stories. I could not be more proud to be among a group of people that,
when in the middle of a storm, rises up to provide what matters most to our community.
Of all the metrics we talked about today, the one I am most proud of is our commitment to safety. The
excellent things we have done have been done safely, with the best safety record to date in JEA’s
history. One injury is one too many, and making sure every employee goes home safely each and every
day will remain our most important priority. I am intensely proud of having had the privilege to lead JEA
to this historic achievement.

 While leading JEA through this transition I have fully cooperated with all investigations. In late 2019 I
reached out to the State Attorney’s office and told it I was willing to assist in its investigation. In January
I did the same with the US Department of Justice, the United States Attorney and the FBI. I am proud
that I have fulfilled that commitment, without wavering. This will not change, and I thank those men and
women for their professional, unbiased, and non-political investigation of the facts.
As for me I continue to be strongly guided by my faith, and I believe the past two years has been my
own version of the Parable of the Flood. In that story a man is trapped in his home during a flood and
prays to God to rescue him. His neighbor urged him to leave and offered a ride, but the man said he was
waiting for God to rescue him. A boat then came by to offer a rescue, and finally a helicopter, and the
man refused them, waiting for God to rescue him. When the man gets to heaven and asks God why He
didn’t rescue him, God says, I sent you a pickup truck, a boat, and a helicopter, what else did you want
me to do?? When I was passed over for the Interim CEO role more than two years ago, I passed on the
pickup truck. Over the past 2 years I had my boat moments, but I am on board the helicopter now and
trust in God to guide my steps into the future.
I wish all my 2,000 teammates at JEA all the best into the future. You have much to be proud of.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to give my last CEO report.
Delivered by Melissa H. Dykes, 4/28/2020